“Internet Service Providers are common carriers and must carry all comers.”
The way things are going that won’t last long.
‘I’m sorry to inform you that we no longer value you as a customer...We’ve seen from our logs that you like visiting FreeRepublic and other unsavory sites that violate our sensibilities...shared values...blah blah blah
That’s when you call Saul and sue them into oblivion.
Secure in the knowledge that the damage your lawsuit will inflict will mainly fall upon public-sector retirees!
Not only that, but such collusion can lead to your bank account and credit cards being closed to you and other financial consequences.
The Chinese have their great firewall to enforce their versions of censorship. Does it work? Not if there is any internet provided. The Chinese could give every Chinese a walled garden AOL experience, and they try to some extent. But as soon as a single Chinese company is allowed to advertise their products to the rest of the world, that creates potential covert channels to get information in and out.
There are thousands of programmers around the world that work on anti-censorship software allowing people to browse whatever they want. Undoubtedly it is more cumbersome than an open internet, but it works, provided you aren't trying to stream censored video (video streaming is too much of a bandwidth hog to hide inside other traffic).
Bottom line, complete censorship is impossible. Freerepublic could be blacklisted but that would ultimately fail as people simply ignore the "AOL" internet content and only use the real internet hidden underneath.
(s) Verizon no longer services registered republicans(/s)